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Just listened to a podcast on this [1] a) 95% of severe covid cases in Indonesia had vitamin D deficiency (n=780) b) Darker skin in high latitudes is strongly

Just listened to a podcast on this [1] a) 95% of severe covid cases in Indonesia had vitamin D deficiency (n=780) b) Darker skin in high latitudes is strongly correlated with vitamin D deficiency c) In Sweden, Somali immigrants make up 40% of the covid hospitalizations despite being .8% of the population. d) Vitamin D is also a hormone that regulates up to 5% of all gene expression while your immune system cells have vitamin D receptors e) 70% of Americans have insufficient (a step above deficient) Vitamin D levels [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45rlZGRz6Qo&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45rlZGRz6Qo&feature=youtu.be, [Also] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_ZJ8YDOX6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_ZJ8YDOX6g

deng 6y ago
While that may be true, I'd really like a better source than a channel which otherwise deals with "supplements that lengthen telomeres" or the age-old sauna-detox myth.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Yeah, YouTube is an anti-source for health information; far too many people selling something.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  If you actually watch the video, they are not uncritical regarding the idea of lengthening telomeres due to a hypothetical cancer risk. Then they point to two studies that show that Omega 3 and Vitamin D lenghtened or maintained telomere length against control groups. The benefits of sauna are supported in a similar fashion. You can argue that the studies are of poor quality, but that is true for most studies regarding medicine and especially nutrition. You gotta take a chance either way.
- jamisteven 6y ago
  There are at least 3 randomized studies on D and its affects on respiratory diseases.
- todd8 6y ago
  I was surprised to learn a few years ago that saunas might actually have significant health benefits. See the references below from The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), and Dr. Patrick who has interviewed the original researcher. [1] https://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/sauna-use-associated-with-reduced-risk-of-cardiac-all-cause-mortality/ https://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/sauna-use-associated... [2] https://www.jwatch.org/fw109897/2015/02/24/sauna-use-linked-better-health-finland https://www.jwatch.org/fw109897/2015/02/24/sauna-use-linked-... [3] https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/sauna-heart-presentation https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/sauna-heart-presenta...
  - deng 6y ago
    I explicitly said "sauna-detox myth", i.e., the myth that you can "detoxify" your body through sweating.
    - shijie 6y ago
      I’m surprised to hear that you believe this to be a myth. The only sources claiming this to be a myth seem to be popular news sites referencing each other in a circular fashion. Here’s a detailed study on the matter: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3312275/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3312275/
- shibeouya 6y ago
  I've seen at least 6 or 7 research studies coming to the same conclusion that vitamin D deficiency leads to more severe outcome. It's not just from a random channel.
mindviews 6y ago
Here's the paper mentioned in (a) above that's the source of the claim: [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3585561 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3585561 Here is another paper with similarly stark data: [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3571484 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3571484 Table 1 in each of those papers show Vitamin D status vs Outcomes. The correlation between Vitamin D status, where Normal is >30 ng/ml (or 75 nmol/L), and death rates is stark. From [1] (which had n=780 cases) here is the punchline: "98.9% of Vitamin D deficient cases died while only 1.1% of them were active cases. 87.8% of Vitamin D insufficient cases died while only 12.2% of them were active cases. Only 4.1% of cases with normal Vitamin D levels died while 95.9% of them were active cases." From [2] (which had n=212 cases) here is the punchline: "Of the 212 (100.0%) cases of Covid-2019, 49 (23.1%) were identified mild, 59 (27.8%) were ordinary, 56 (26.4%) were severe, and 48 (22.6%) were critical (Table 1). Mean serum 25(OH)D level was 23.8 ng/ml. Serum 25(OH)D level of cases with mild outcome was 31.2 ng/ml, 27.4 ng/ml for ordinary, 21.2 ng/ml for severe, and 17.1 ng/ml for critical." Note: the classification for outcomes was "(1) mild – mild clinical features without pneumonia diagnosis, (2) ordinary – confirmed pneumonia in chest computer tomography with fever and other respiratory symptoms, (3) severe – hypoxia (at most 93% oxygen saturation) and respiratory distress or abnormal blood gas analysis results (PaCO2 >50 mm Hg or PaO2 < 0 mm Hg), and (4) critical – respiratory failure requiring intensive case monitoring." I want to see a dozen more studies like [1] and [2] to see if this holds up to replication. The show notes for the parent video are quite comprehensive with links to references. The summary above leaves out the detailed discussion of the interplay between Vitamin D, the renin-angiotensin-system, the ACE2 receptor, and SARS-CoV-2: [3] https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/vitamin-d-covid-19 https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/vitamin-d-covid-19
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  Thanks for the links! Interestingly, these papers together are much stronger evidence than either apart. This is because they use different methods. The OP is a population level study, while the second link you shared is a retrospective individual level study. While I have some concerns with the stats in both papers (I'm always suspicious of p-values close to the magic number of 0.05), this does seem like interesting research, and potentially very helpful to dealing with Covid-19. The irony of course, is that I suspect many of the Northern latitude people with high levels of Vit-D may be getting it through tourism to Southern Europe, which is very unlikely to happen this year.
progre 6y ago
> c) In Sweden, Somali immigrants make up 40% of the covid hospitalizations This number seems high, but may be accurate for northen Stockholm (hard to check as only confirmed infections and deaths are tracked in available statistics). Certainly not for the whole of Sweden. Anyway, while the vitamin D deficency may be a part of it, many Somali immigrants live in apartments with a lot of family, often multiple generations. So, social class is the main factor. Also, one medical doctor of Somali decent in Stockholm said that it was hard to reach the Somalis with information on good prevention, as health info was at first only available in Swedish and the official minority languages plus English and Arabic. Information in Somali is available now.
- nl 6y ago
  Plus a highly contagious virus transmitting quickly through a close knit immigrant community should be unsurprising to anyone with any idea about epidemiology. This article (about the Assyrian-Syriac immigrants, who aren't as dark skinned as Somali, but are also hard hit) explains how they come into contact with a lot more sick people and thus transmit it: Earlier this month, the country’s public health agency reported that people in Sweden with foreign backgrounds are disproportionately represented among those who need hospitalization. That squares with the experience of Terez Kino, a resident of the city of Södertälje and member of its large population of Assyrian-Syriacs, an ethnic minority scattered across Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. She used to have five carers, all of immigrant background as well, who would come to her home and tend to her needs. Four are now sick at home with virus symptoms. Her elderly sister has also contracted the virus from her carers, and her brother recently died of the virus. Her son is now taking care of her. https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2020/0427/With-science-and-shared-values-Sweden-charts-own-pandemic-course https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2020/0427/With-scienc...
- Siham 6y ago
  Where did get that figure of 40% from? Lack of information in Swedish had very little to do with why Somalis contracted the virus. Tegnell even pointed this out.
  - progre 6y ago
redis_mlc 6y ago
> a) 95% of severe covid cases in Indonesia had vitamin D deficiency (n=780) Indonesia is a developing nation, with most people still laboring as rice farmers and making $1 - $2 per day. I'm sure they're deficient with any vitamin not found in rice, which they eat 3 times per day. (Rice is packed with calories, not vitamins.) Also, due to corona, there is starvation in the cities. In the West, we use automation to ship groceries, but in Indonesia they unload trucks using manual labor. So the lockdown means they can't unload food trucks, or it gets delayed. Additionally, many people have no income, or 50% of their former low office salary, and Indonesia is not a welfare state, so people cannot afford food at this time. Very tragic example of lower-income group receiving the worst treatment during this pandemic, basically famine. It's totally unrealistic to expect them to hang on until 2022.
- nl 6y ago
  > I'm sure they're deficient with any vitamin not found in rice Vitamin D generally comes from sun exposure, and people laboring outdoors are extremely unlikely to be suffering of this particular deficiency. It's more likely to be older people who spend all their time indoors. It'd be interesting to see this controlled for age of deaths.
  - anpago 6y ago
    Many people in hot countries tend to cover up however hot it is.
    - nl 6y ago
      They do, but it's still extremely unlikely that outdoor labourers are getting insufficient vitamin D. The problem occurs when people in the same ethnic groups (with the same dark skin) start working indoors and actively avoiding sunlight (often because light-colored skin is seen as high class or aesthetically pleasing).
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  This is what I was told by two different people in Jakarta last week. Not sure what the downvotes are about in this case.

deng 6y ago

While that may be true, I'd really like a better source than a channel which otherwise deals with "supplements that lengthen telomeres" or the age-old sauna-detox myth.

pjc50 6y ago
Yeah, YouTube is an anti-source for health information; far too many people selling something.
gridlockd 6y ago
If you actually watch the video, they are not uncritical regarding the idea of lengthening telomeres due to a hypothetical cancer risk. Then they point to two studies that show that Omega 3 and Vitamin D lenghtened or maintained telomere length against control groups. The benefits of sauna are supported in a similar fashion. You can argue that the studies are of poor quality, but that is true for most studies regarding medicine and especially nutrition. You gotta take a chance either way.
jamisteven 6y ago
There are at least 3 randomized studies on D and its affects on respiratory diseases.
todd8 6y ago
I was surprised to learn a few years ago that saunas might actually have significant health benefits. See the references below from The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), and Dr. Patrick who has interviewed the original researcher. [1] https://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/sauna-use-associated-with-reduced-risk-of-cardiac-all-cause-mortality/ https://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/sauna-use-associated... [2] https://www.jwatch.org/fw109897/2015/02/24/sauna-use-linked-better-health-finland https://www.jwatch.org/fw109897/2015/02/24/sauna-use-linked-... [3] https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/sauna-heart-presentation https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/sauna-heart-presenta...
- deng 6y ago
  I explicitly said "sauna-detox myth", i.e., the myth that you can "detoxify" your body through sweating.
  - shijie 6y ago
    I’m surprised to hear that you believe this to be a myth. The only sources claiming this to be a myth seem to be popular news sites referencing each other in a circular fashion. Here’s a detailed study on the matter: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3312275/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3312275/
shibeouya 6y ago
I've seen at least 6 or 7 research studies coming to the same conclusion that vitamin D deficiency leads to more severe outcome. It's not just from a random channel.

mindviews 6y ago

Here's the paper mentioned in (a) above that's the source of the claim: [1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3585561 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3585561 Here is another paper with similarly stark data: [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3571484 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3571484 Table 1 in each of those papers show Vitamin D status vs Outcomes. The correlation between Vitamin D status, where Normal is >30 ng/ml (or 75 nmol/L), and death rates is stark. From [1] (which had n=780 cases) here is the punchline: "98.9% of Vitamin D deficient cases died while only 1.1% of them were active cases. 87.8% of Vitamin D insufficient cases died while only 12.2% of them were active cases. Only 4.1% of cases with normal Vitamin D levels died while 95.9% of them were active cases." From [2] (which had n=212 cases) here is the punchline: "Of the 212 (100.0%) cases of Covid-2019, 49 (23.1%) were identified mild, 59 (27.8%) were ordinary, 56 (26.4%) were severe, and 48 (22.6%) were critical (Table 1). Mean serum 25(OH)D level was 23.8 ng/ml. Serum 25(OH)D level of cases with mild outcome was 31.2 ng/ml, 27.4 ng/ml for ordinary, 21.2 ng/ml for severe, and 17.1 ng/ml for critical." Note: the classification for outcomes was "(1) mild – mild clinical features without pneumonia diagnosis, (2) ordinary – confirmed pneumonia in chest computer tomography with fever and other respiratory symptoms, (3) severe – hypoxia (at most 93% oxygen saturation) and respiratory distress or abnormal blood gas analysis results (PaCO2 >50 mm Hg or PaO2 < 0 mm Hg), and (4) critical – respiratory failure requiring intensive case monitoring." I want to see a dozen more studies like [1] and [2] to see if this holds up to replication. The show notes for the parent video are quite comprehensive with links to references. The summary above leaves out the detailed discussion of the interplay between Vitamin D, the renin-angiotensin-system, the ACE2 receptor, and SARS-CoV-2: [3] https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/vitamin-d-covid-19 https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/vitamin-d-covid-19

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
Thanks for the links! Interestingly, these papers together are much stronger evidence than either apart. This is because they use different methods. The OP is a population level study, while the second link you shared is a retrospective individual level study. While I have some concerns with the stats in both papers (I'm always suspicious of p-values close to the magic number of 0.05), this does seem like interesting research, and potentially very helpful to dealing with Covid-19. The irony of course, is that I suspect many of the Northern latitude people with high levels of Vit-D may be getting it through tourism to Southern Europe, which is very unlikely to happen this year.

progre 6y ago

> c) In Sweden, Somali immigrants make up 40% of the covid hospitalizations This number seems high, but may be accurate for northen Stockholm (hard to check as only confirmed infections and deaths are tracked in available statistics). Certainly not for the whole of Sweden. Anyway, while the vitamin D deficency may be a part of it, many Somali immigrants live in apartments with a lot of family, often multiple generations. So, social class is the main factor. Also, one medical doctor of Somali decent in Stockholm said that it was hard to reach the Somalis with information on good prevention, as health info was at first only available in Swedish and the official minority languages plus English and Arabic. Information in Somali is available now.

nl 6y ago
Plus a highly contagious virus transmitting quickly through a close knit immigrant community should be unsurprising to anyone with any idea about epidemiology. This article (about the Assyrian-Syriac immigrants, who aren't as dark skinned as Somali, but are also hard hit) explains how they come into contact with a lot more sick people and thus transmit it: Earlier this month, the country’s public health agency reported that people in Sweden with foreign backgrounds are disproportionately represented among those who need hospitalization. That squares with the experience of Terez Kino, a resident of the city of Södertälje and member of its large population of Assyrian-Syriacs, an ethnic minority scattered across Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. She used to have five carers, all of immigrant background as well, who would come to her home and tend to her needs. Four are now sick at home with virus symptoms. Her elderly sister has also contracted the virus from her carers, and her brother recently died of the virus. Her son is now taking care of her. https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2020/0427/With-science-and-shared-values-Sweden-charts-own-pandemic-course https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2020/0427/With-scienc...
Siham 6y ago
Where did get that figure of 40% from? Lack of information in Swedish had very little to do with why Somalis contracted the virus. Tegnell even pointed this out.
- progre 6y ago

redis_mlc 6y ago

> a) 95% of severe covid cases in Indonesia had vitamin D deficiency (n=780) Indonesia is a developing nation, with most people still laboring as rice farmers and making $1 - $2 per day. I'm sure they're deficient with any vitamin not found in rice, which they eat 3 times per day. (Rice is packed with calories, not vitamins.) Also, due to corona, there is starvation in the cities. In the West, we use automation to ship groceries, but in Indonesia they unload trucks using manual labor. So the lockdown means they can't unload food trucks, or it gets delayed. Additionally, many people have no income, or 50% of their former low office salary, and Indonesia is not a welfare state, so people cannot afford food at this time. Very tragic example of lower-income group receiving the worst treatment during this pandemic, basically famine. It's totally unrealistic to expect them to hang on until 2022.

nl 6y ago
> I'm sure they're deficient with any vitamin not found in rice Vitamin D generally comes from sun exposure, and people laboring outdoors are extremely unlikely to be suffering of this particular deficiency. It's more likely to be older people who spend all their time indoors. It'd be interesting to see this controlled for age of deaths.
- anpago 6y ago
  Many people in hot countries tend to cover up however hot it is.
  - nl 6y ago
    They do, but it's still extremely unlikely that outdoor labourers are getting insufficient vitamin D. The problem occurs when people in the same ethnic groups (with the same dark skin) start working indoors and actively avoiding sunlight (often because light-colored skin is seen as high class or aesthetically pleasing).
redis_mlc 6y ago
This is what I was told by two different people in Jakarta last week. Not sure what the downvotes are about in this case.